Natural Rights-Led Governance at COP30: Why a Small Room in Belém Felt Like the Future of Climate Politics

On this humid November morning in Belém, far from the large plenaries and scripted press conferences, meeting room 18 seems to crackle with energy. The official COP30 badge on the door reads: “Transformative Dialogue on Natural Rights–Led Governance (NRLG).” The framework of NRLG, developed by M. Zakir Hossain Khan, offers a powerful remedy for achieving planetary justice and inclusive Earth governance.

Inside something was forming even rarer than a new text.  Indigenous leaders, young activists, climate finance specialists, disaster managers, legal experts and animal welfare advocates were trying to do something that the Paris Rulebook never quite achieved. They wanted to change the basic principles that our society runs on. 

From Anthropocentric to Earth Centric 

The session opened with a simple but radical claim. 

The participants stressed that the existing developmental model is rooted in an extractive logic. This viewpoint creates a divide between people and nature; it considers ecosystems to be stockpiles of resources, and it regards justice as confined to relationships between people. 

One of the NRLG architects said bluntly this: conventional economics is extractive. According to the NRLG framework, it seeks an alternative ecosystem, in which governance decisions are evaluated according to whether or not they enhance or harm the well-being of life that nourishes us. 

In this framing, natural rights are not a metaphor. They refer to a set of rights that belong to rivers, forests, oceans, animals and landscapes, as well as the rights of human communities living with and in them. We must reorganize everything, from law to finance to early warning systems to international cooperation. 

NRLG, as presented in Belém, is not a side event slogan. It is a proposed governance architecture. It calls for. 

• A global code of human rights. 

• Give ecosystems greater legal recognition at the national level. 

• The courts and monetary mechanisms which can enforce such rights. 

• It is the move away from extractive development to what is referred to as “ecosystem prosperity”, where human wellbeing and planetary resilience rise together, not in competition. 

Indigenous Governance: Systems That Already Work 

If NRLG is the future, Indigenous people make it very clear that parts of that future exist in Indigenous communities and have existed for centuries. 

A speaker from Nepal said that in the mountain communities, the glaciers, peaks and valleys are considered life, not an asset. She talked of traditional institutions that select their leaders from within the community, consensus-based decisions, and the seven non-violence principles which prohibit killing of animals in certain places and times. These create de facto biodiversity preserves without a single project document external to the community. 

These are not romantic stories. They are governance systems. They delegate tasks, enforce laws, safeguard species, and maintain the ecosystem under climate stress. The NRLG framework poses the question, 'not how do we teach indigenous people governance' but 'how do we let indigenous governance teach the world'. 

A powerful intervention from an indigenous representative of an international research and policy organization sharpened that point. Global frameworks, they warned, love to quote indigenous wisdom but deny indigenous peoples any real power. 

Indigenous power must accompany this appreciation of indigenous knowledge. They said that this isn't cultural inclusion; this is political exclusion.  According to them, if NRLG is to have any meaning, it should recognize indigenous peoples as rights holders, not stakeholders, and base land rights, territorial governance and political authority in any future legal architecture for natural rights. 

A Fourteen-Year-Old from Earth Warriors 

It was likely to be one of the youngest voices that rearranged the room. As a 14-year-old indigenous girl, I am the founder of Earth Warriors'. The floods in Pakistan washed away my community’s only school. It made climate change very real for me. It was no longer a vague, abstract threat. The climate crisis was a disaster I experienced. 

Her organization currently runs free climate education for kids in their own languages for thousands of students. To her, natural rights and government are not conference terms. Her friends always wonder if they’ll have a classroom to sit in next year. Will their families have land to stand on? Will there be anything left to inherit? 

She reminded that Pakistan contributes less than 1 percent to greenhouse gases through emissions but communities like hers face the brunt of losses. Representation, she argued, is not charity. It is justice. 

Her call was direct. 

• Involve Native youth in decision making processes. 

• Resource their solutions directly. 

• Stop treating them as symbols and instead treating them like designers of the future. 

One could not listen to her and still believe that “engaging youth” merely translates to adding a side event and a photo opp. 

When Rivers Become Legal Persons 

The topic shifted from Nepal’s mountains to rivers and oceans of Aotearoa and the pacific. 

A Māori speaker from New Zealand, Aotearoa, reminded the proceedings that her family received radical legal personhood for their rivers and mountains long before it became a thing. She was speaking as one who introduced herself as the river and the river as her. Her identity is inseparable from that living body of water. 

Even this landmark was not framed as an end point but as a starting point. She questioned how the law may accept rivers and mountains but not the oceans that bind the countries of the Pacific. Oil exploration as well as shipping lanes and fishing fleets are operating well beyond the narrow three-mile zones which some coastal laws protect. Whales migrate across entire ocean basins. Wildlife protection needs imagination at sea, and your help to be successful. 

Her question about the room was simple and devastating. If we actually believe that nature has rights, why do so many laws still stop at the shoreline. 

Animals, Whales and the Right to Simply Be 

The NRLG meeting extended beyond just terrains and waterways. An investigator of a worldwide animal welfare organization, in a talk, spoke on what it means to recognize animals as not just sentient but as ‘rights holders’ under the framework of natural rights. 

They reminded us of those whales, penguins, fish and many other species are not just background. They are guardians of balance in ecosystems who belong to a community of life that is wider than human beings. Recognizing their inherent worth is not sentimental. One way or another, it forces governance to protect the integrity of systems as whole, not just the pieces that people find useful. 

In an NRLG world, it is not enough to avoid cruelty. Governance must protect the conditions to allow animals to be themselves. 

Debt, Finance and the Cost of Survival 

NRLG is not a theory that floats above the economy. This poses a challenge to the rat flow of money, who pays, who decides. A climate finance expert from Bangladesh showed several figures that were very alarming. In Bangladesh, the share of government revenue spent to service external debt was more than health in 2023 and only slightly above education. The significant funds for climate finance are largely in the form of loans instead of grants which have been added to the fiscal stress rather than removing it. 

When a state has to pick between making payments to creditors or providing protection against cyclones or salinity, natural rights are not just overlooked. They are structurally violated. 

The speaker stated climate finance should be viewed through the lens of natural rights and justice. 

That means. 

• Climate vulnerable states will get more grants than loans. 

• To create funds to value nature and frontline communities, not creditors 

• We should consider debt relief and climate finance as measures to repair ecological and social harm that does not entrench it. 

When debt takes away a change or protection capacity, it can be described and considered a climatic injustice. 

Natural Rights-Led Governance at COP30

Early Warning as a Natural Right 

Gradually, the meeting moved from lasting financial strategies to the ever-changing situations of devastation. 

Delegates from Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority described how they moved from reactive disaster response to proactive early warning. 

They framed the right to information in risky situations as a natural right per se. In a country with increasingly erratic weather patterns and a tendency to underestimate calamities, technology is presenting newer options to improve early warning. However, a lack of context awareness makes the implementation ineffective. 

They spoke about it. 

• Identifying hazards Like Glacial Melt, Flash Flooding and Drought. 

• Designing early actions that protect communities and ecosystems in parallel. 

• We need to build communication systems that gives warning in local and indigenous languages so that people can act on them. 

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They have observed that when cities and villages are informed and prepared, they are safe. The damaging impact of unprepared responses is averted to the surrounding environment as well. 

According to NRLG, an early warning system is not a funny technical add-on. We have a responsibility to protect nature. 

The Elephant in The Room: Growth 

During the session, the person brought up the elephant in the room. 

A delegate representing Egypt and Palestine reminded everyone that nothing in nature will grow indefinitely. The forest grows, the river changes, and the population becomes stable. Only our economic model takes continuous development of humanity and nature as sacred.

They disputed the notion that societies could resolve the crisis by chasing a greener future while continuing to accumulate endlessly and asked what it means to build economies around slowing down, sharing, and sufficiency. Not as austerity, but as a return to natural law. 

Through the NRLG framework, we assess the health of societies not with GDP curves but through the resilience and dignity of communities, the integrity of ecosystems and the freedom of generations yet unborn to live well. 

Between Symbolism and Transformation 

The leading indigenous researcher who cautioned against “green colonialism” offered the most potent criticism of the existing system. Some laws that confer rights to the natural world have been approved in the name of protection. However, they reveal the underlying intent to displace or restrict loophole indigenous communities. While the global campaign calls for the saving of rivers and forests, they ignore the people who are largely dependent on them. As climate action gathers pace, it is adding to the history of extraction and control. 

They contended that for NRLG to transcend being merely an attractive phrase, it must be supported by substantive action and meaningful implementation.

• Recognize the jurisdiction and land rights of indigenous peoples, in law. 

• Make sure there is consent by people at their appropriate time before any project or mechanism. 

• Finance indigenous led solutions directly through channels. 

• Indigenous political authority is not a decoration; it is an imperative for planetary survival. 

If this is not done, the world may repeat its past mistake while establishing a new green order. 

Why This Room Matters 

If one were to only look at the official COP30 agenda, they would have missed what happened in that little room in Belém. 

There was no new treaty. No ministerial photo line. No dramatic walkout. 

What there was, however, felt in many ways more important. There was,

• A fourteen-year-old kid whose school had washed away taught hundreds of children about climate change in their own language. 

• Mountain communities practicing non-violence principles protect biodiversity better than many protected areas. 

• Making Risk info a right not a privilege by Disaster managers. 

• Pacific guardians assert that rivers must become legal persons to enable their flow into the open ocean. 

• World leaders vow to end wildlife trade, but will they keep their promises? 

• Indigenous scholars do not allow the knowledge of their peoples to be extracted without their power.  

• All but the name economists ask the world to admit that endless growth belongs to fairy tales, not a survival plan. 

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And a framework started to emerge, still incomplete but coherent enough to name what so many are feeling. The architecture of climate governance is failing to create any solutions at all. It is failing to ask the right questions. 

Governance of a Natural Rights Kind does not claim to be a panacea. Nature and justice need to be centered on law, finance, institutions, and daily life. This is the demand. It invites countries, movements, and communities to build systems in which people and the planet rise together.  At the closing of the session, one of the hosts from the Change Initiative reminded us of that NRLG is a living document. The goal is to encourage a collective community of practice that spans borders and different movements, where people can experiment, gain knowledge, and drive progress. 

This feature in Nature Insights is part of that invitation. 

When someone next claims that climate governance is stuck, they should remember Meeting Room 18 in Belém and the people inside it who were already quietly drafting something different.